are woods, before which stood the cathedralesque ruins of a
brick-kiln, with its tall tower and apse-like ovens, on a green platform
of levelled ground scored with the red of rusted trolley-lines. The hill
grew higher and stood sheer like a turfed cliff, and was surmounted by
four tall towers of grey stone. It would have been impressive if the
fall of the cliff had not been disfigured by a large shed of pink
corrugated iron with "Hallelujah Army" painted on its roof, which was
built on a shelf where some hawthorn trees and bramble bushes found a
footing.

Then for a time, after an oblique valley had cleft the range, an
elm-hedge ran along the crest, till there looked down a grey church with
a squinting spire and grey-black yews set about it, and something white
like a monument standing up on a mound beside it. Woods appeared and
receded, leaving the hilltop bare, and returned; there was a broken
hedge of hawthorn; a downward line of trees scored the gentler slope of
the escarpment, and from a square red brick house on the skyline there
fell an orchard.

"That is our house up there. That is Yaverland's End," said Marion; "and
look on the other window, that is Roothing Harbour." But all Ellen could
see was a forest of slim straight poles leaning everywhere above the
sea-wall. "Those are the masts of the fishing-boats," said Marion
indifferently, even grumbling, as was her way when she spoke of the
things she loved. "Don't laugh at this place, though it is all mud. I
can tell you the Elizabethan adventures drew most of their seamen from
here and Tilbury." The sea-wall stopped, and beyond a foreshore of
coal-dust and soiled shingle and tarred huts, such as is found always
where men go down to the sea in ships, lay a bare harbour basin in which
fishing-boats lolled on their sides in silver mud. Further out, smaller
boats lay tidily on a bar of coarse grass that ran out from a sea-walled
island that lay alongside the marsh the train had just crossed, with a
farm and its orchard lying at the end it thrust into the harbour.

Now the train ran slower, and it could be seen that the line had been
driven violently through the high street with no decent clearance, for
to its left it could be seen that it was overhung by the backs of
cottages, and on its right was the cobbled roadway on which walked
bearded men in jerseys and top boots and women with that look of brine
rather than bloom which is characteristic of fishing-villages.